Swimming Upstream
by James Jago
Summary: In the aftermath of a Death Eater attack on Kings Cross, Snape and Flitwick enlist Draco Malfoy's Muggleborn Auror cousin to change the course of history and save his murdered sister.
1. Rewriting History

All the usual disclaimers apply; JK Rowling's more than welcome to the Malones. British Pepper And Spice really exists, and much as I've described it; I've worked there and it's a hellhole.

This won't make an awful lot of sense if you haven't read my previous works in this category, and its sole purpose is to tie it into current canon; I expect I'll have to do even more work when Book 7 lands, but still. You might also be interested to know that this story has the distinction of being the first I've written entirely on my shiny new laptop, and in my Hall of Residence at university!

It was quite a turnout, he reflected. That was good, and it was bad. Too many people had sent their kids overseas for his liking during the immediate aftermath of Voldemort's demise. As if any of the various Death Eater factions would be stupid enough to take another crack at Hogwarts!

Kings Cross, on the the hand... He shivered at the thought, and wished his sister had agreed to let him drive Lucy up there. Short of disobeying direct orders from the Minister himself and telling her about the threatening letter from Pettigrew's outfit, there had been nothing he could do to persuade her.

"Rick!" He started, turning towards the familiar voice. Draco Malfoy. What in Christ's name was he doing here? "Don't look so stunned; I'm seeing my niece off."

"That's not what surprises me, Draco," he admitted. "It's just that the last time we saw each other you called me rather a lot of very unpleasant names, and then tried to hex me."

"Oh, come ON! It's not as if you didn't pummel seven kinds of crap out of me afterwards. Listen," he continued, his voice turning serious, "I know I spent quite a while perpetuating the previous generation's family feud, but I sort of re-evaluated my attitude after Dumbledore died."

"When you bottled out and made Snape do it to save your hide?" Rick snarled. "Do you have ANY idea what that cost him?"

"Rick, you know and I know that he was a dying man. That liquid was the ultimate booby-trap; I've seen what it does to a person. Severus was doing him a favour, and they both knew it. And as a matter of interest, Voldemort killed my mother in a fit of pique because his carefully worked-out plan to get at my father had gone tits-up. I found the body, and it wasn't pretty."

Rick swallowed. "I didn't know. I'm sorry, Draco. If the olive branch still has a few leaves on it..." They shook hands. "Seen Fran anywhere?"

"If I'd run across her, would I still be alive?"They laughed. "If she didn't kill me, Hermione would have; I don't think they've forgiven me for... well, any of it."

"Wouldn't surprise me; talk about militant lesbians..." Rick scanned the crowds, and Draco finally noticed the earpiece he was wearing. He nodded, not at all surprised his cousin was doing more than seeing off his sister's adopted daughter. "Was it also you who turned Luna's favourite sweater into a straitjacket? She told me all about that one, and then made me sleep on the sofa for a week because I suggested doing the same with her nightie one evening."

"Pervert! How is Luna these days, anyway?"

"Running the family business, a mother of three, and just as offbeat as she ever was. Takes some getting used to, but once you get past it..." he tailed off, staring intently at one man. Something about him made the young Auror's finely honed policeman's radar go bleep. "Don't go anywhere."

He walked over to the man. "Excuse me, sir? I need to see inside that bag," he said calmly, showing his identity card.

A backhand punch sent him staggering, and the man ran for Platform 9 3/4. Rick gave chase. "All units, this is Malone. In pursuit of suspicious character. Suspect is Caucasian male in red sweatshirt, carrying a large rucksack. He's heading for Gate Seventeen!" 'Gate Seventeen' was the codeword for the entrance to the Hogwarts platform.

Platforms 9 and 10 were deserted except for Hogwarts families, out of use while the trackbed was being repaired. That was one thing, Rick reflected. If he apparated out there'd be a hell of a lot of explaining to do...

Three more Aurors were already there, all carrying sidearms. "Halt! Armed police officers!" they yelled. The fugitive drew a gun of his own, an old Stechkin. It was a long-obsolete Soviet Army design, popular with terrorists because it had the option of fully automatic fire. He emptied the entire clip, cutting down one Auror and a passer-by.

"Shots fired, shots fired! One officer and one civilian down, request immediate paramedic response!" Rick yelled into his radio, staying in pursuit. The fugitive dived through the fake pillar. That settled it, Rick thought fleetingly. If he just had drugs or something in there he wouldn't have done that. He followed, drawing his own service automatic as he did so.

Somebody had left their trunk a couple of yards ahead of the exit, and Rick didn't see it in time. Just before he went sprawling, he saw the other man apparate. The rucksack was still there.

And then the whole world seemed to explode.

They reckoned afterwards that the fall had probably saved his life. That was the cruellest part of it. Rick had known he'd failed the moment he saw the man apparate, but being saved by his own clumsiness even as all the hundreds of ball-bearings packed in with the explosives had scythed through the crowd was too much to bear. It was HIS FUCKING FAULT! Why couldn't he had died there and then?

When he'd finally pulled himself up and looked around him, uncaring of the dozens of puncture wounds from the glass shards from the concession booth, he'd broken down in tears of grief and impotent rage. Staggering between knots of dead and wounded, trying to help despite being badly torn up and all but deaf, he'd come upon the three of them.

Francis Malone, Hermione Granger and their adopted daughter, all dead. They'd been mere feet from the bomb, and were barely recognisable. Aurors and paramedics from St Mungo's who'd apparated in as soon as the blast had been reported had seen him place the pistol in his mouth and wrestled it away from him, then eventually had to flexicuff and sedate him to stop him grabbing for it again.

The final toll stood at fifty-two dead, and over a hundred and thirty badly wounded. It hadn't made the mainstream papers; the Ministry had made sure of that. The gunfire was reported as a Flying Squad operation against a heroin deal that had turned sour. Rick's description was sufficient for an identity-kit photo to be issued, for all the good it would do.

He had a few visitors. Luna and the kids, a few other members of the squad. All found him deeply withdrawn, nearly catatonic.

The final visitor was something of a surprise. "Malone," Snape said coolly.

"Professor."

"Lying there glaring at the ceiling like it was personally responsible for this atrocity will not bring her back, young man, and taking your own life would have achieved even less."

"You know of anything that CAN help?" Rick snarled back. "What the fuck am I supposed to do, shake it off and get on with my life? After all you've been through you ought to know better than that. Now unless you have some clever plan to go back in time and change the course of history, I would very much appreciate it if you would leave me in peace."

"Funny you should say that," Snape said with a thin smile, "because that is precisely why I'm here."

Rick was very still for a few moments. "I don't suppose that even my dear-departed Uncle Lucius would be enough of a bastard to joke about something like that," he said at last. "What have you got in mind?"

"I propose that we use Flitwick's Patent Reversing Charm to dispose of Voldemort at an early stage. The salient facts are as follows. Until the incident at the Potter family home, he kept all six Horcruxes in one location; the plan to disperse them was only implemented when he was vanquished for the first time. His innermost circle of associates -which did not include myself at that time- evidently knew of their existence, and put the plan into effect as soon as they became aware that the seventh Horcruxation had backfired so spectacularly.

"I have been provided with a large and very powerful bomb, detonated by radio at a range of up to twenty miles. The Horcruxes were stored less than three miles from Godric's Hollow. And since we happen to know precisely where Voldemort will be at only one moment prior to their dispersal..."

Rick mulled it over. "It's illegal, it's dangerous and the odds are a thousand to one against it working. I'm in!"

The three of them assembled in a small conference room provided by the Ministry. Rick went carefully over his equipment.

BXP 9mm sub machine-gun, loaded and cocked, suppressor on securely. Walther P88 sidearm, same. Stun grenades. Night-vision goggles. Lock picks. Rope and grapnel. Map. Plans of the target building. Radio. Satchel charge. Wand. Funny how he always checked that last, a product of being taught magic at home after he got home from school... _Shit! You can't afford to think about that now, you bloody fool_._ You can save them all, but only if you fucking well CONCENTRATE! _he yelled at himself inside his head.

"I can get you there to within a radius of four or five miles, but I can promise the right date." Flitwick promised. "When I'm trying to control it from within it's rather less precise."

"Is that horizontally or vertically?" Rick enquired drily.

"You return at the same elevation you leave, hence the fact that we're in an upstairs room." Rick was momentarily startled, then reminded himself that the area he was aiming for was a good bit higher above sea level than London. He stood carefully on the Kwik-Step that Flitwick had borrowed from the stationery store and waited. Flitwick scattered what appeared to be Floo Powder mixed with something else in a rough circle around Rick, then muttered something in Latin and hurled a time turner into the air above him. It hovered there, and began to glow. "Wish me luck, little sister," Rick muttered. Then, with a flash of blue light, he was gone.

He emerged about three feet above the ground, landing in a crouch on the tarmac... _Tarmac? Flitwick, you're a tit!_ He retreated to the hard shoulder of the A45, thanking his lucky stars that it was empty at this hour, and tried to work out where he was from the map and a handy road sign. The warehouse he was looking for was in the very industrial estate he was searching for. _Okay, so maybe you weren't so far off after all. _Rick unslung his SMG and headed into the large industrial estate, searching for the British Pepper and Spice Company's main plant. It was owned by a front company for the Malfoy estate Author's Note: I can't think of any other reason the warehouse manager got away with half of what he put his staff through, but that's another story, and one I'd just as soon not relive, and just about the last place any wizard would think of looking.

He lowered his night-vision goggles as he approached the main entrance, then raised them again. The streetlights made them worse than useless. _Alarm box on the wall, ordinary mortice locks on the office door. No obvious guards. Plant should be closed at 2AM on a Sunday... Christ, am I ever going to be jet-lagged when I get back!_ He permitted himself a smile at the thought, the first since the bomb, then raised his pistol and took out the alarm box. The soft _thwap_ was no louder than somebody slapping their palm against a wooden surface, and shouldn't carry far. Then he attacked the locks. Within three minutes he was through.

A cautious sweep of the office revealed no sign of additional security. He deposited a single satchel charge beside what the plans called a load bearing wall, then headed into the factory building proper. One charge he left in the canteen kitchen, turning all the gas on as an afterthought, and another he placed in the locker room.

The problem with this place was that it was absolutely enormous. _I should have brought a sodding Lancaster,_ Rick groused, placing a charge in the lower reaches of the bottling room. The warehouse was the worst; it was roughly the size of a football pitch, and stacked quite literally to the rafters with palletised sacks on metal racking. _If the place ever goes bust it ought to make a nice rave venue,_ he thought to himself. _Shame it smells like a tandoori takeaway's Hoover bag in here._

He placed the remaining charges next to the support beams, and found himself with one spare. After wandering about for a few minutes looking for somewhere to put it, he came upon an otherwise unremarkable cupboard with a padlock bearing the insignia of Greville and Nuggan, the magical world's premiere locksmiths. _Jackpot!_ He knelt down and peered at the padlock. The problem with Greville and Nuggan's earlier models, his Surreptitious Entry teacher had told him, was that the makers thought wizards only ever got burgled by other wizards. They were near as dammit spellproof, but any halfway competent housebreaker could get one open with a couple of cocktail sticks. Without taking too much trouble checking the interior of the cupboard, he placed his last block of plastic explosive at the bottom and hid it behind two boxes of shrink-wrap rolls and made good his exit.

It's quite a hike from Brackmills to Godric's Hollow (known to what everybody calls 'non-practitioners of magic' these days as Great Houghton), especially if you miss the bridleway and have to go cross-country. It was nearly dawn before he finally found the rather picturesque little village, and the utterly unremarkable house in which the newly-wed Potters and their young son Harry resided. (Something not often mentioned by the Potters is that Harry had been born mere weeks after they married, which they did in quite some haste; as the best man -Sirius- is alleged to have said during his speech, "Once a Marauder, always a Marauder!")

He bought a copy of the morning paper as soon as the newsagent's opened, making sure all his currency had been transfigured to the appropriate date. Crouching behind a parked Allegro, he laid the BXP beside him and settled in to wait.

Snape landed just outside chez Potter a couple of hours later. He gave Rick a curt nod and rang the bell. A very startled Lily Potter admitted him. A few minutes later, James Potter appeared at the window nursing a rapidly blackening eye. Rick tried hard not to laugh.

Snape perched precariously on the roof, sighting along a bolt-action rifle with telescopic sight he'd acquired from somewhere, and threw an invisibility cloak over himself. _Wonder where he got that... Holy fucking shit!_ Harry Potter, in what was probably his sixth year, appeared from the other end of the road with a sub machine-gun in his hands. Cho Chang was close behind, carrying an AK47. Rick banged his head against the side of the Allegro, and switched on his radio.

"Snape! What the hell have you done, you maniac?"

"I ran into Potter and friends in Romania when Flitwick got us lost. I thought they might be of some assistance. Incidentally, I believe that we have already altered the time-line in some way. I don't pretend to fully understand it myself, but Flitwick seems to think it's not dangerous."

"Altered it how...? Oh." Francis Malone appeared from behind some dustbins, followed by Luna Lovegood and... was that REALLY Draco Malfoy? In what looked suspiciously like a Weasley Sweater? "Lord, give me strength," Rick muttered to himself. Then he saw himself aged seventeen and carrying an Uzi, with a Desert Eagle tucked into the waistband of a pair of jeans he still owned. At this point he decided he was having an acid flashback, engaged the BXP's safety catch and settled in to make the best of it.

Voldemort apparated in right on schedule. Snape fired, but he dodged like somebody in a Wachowski Brothers film and summoned a horde of Death Eaters. A solid wall of gunfire and a number of Molotov Cocktails forced them to take cover until Voldemort rallied the troops and ordered a human-wave attack. Four or five Death Eaters actually made it through the front door, but judging by the noises they didn't get terribly far.

At length, Voldemort stood alone. He pointed a wand at himself, muttering something Rick couldn't hear, and created a dozen copies on each side of himself. _Agent Smith did it better, sunshine_. Rick stood up, and caught the nearest Voldemort's eye. He held up the detonator, and mouthed the words "So long, British Pepper!" and jabbed his thumb down on the button. He later avowed that he'd distinctly heard the Dark Lord say "Oh, _bollocks_," in a slightly strangled voice just before he and his various imitations were cut down by a hail of lead.

Nobody ever did figure out why somebody should go to so much trouble to obliterate the United Kingdom's premier importers of curry powder, which incidentally was spread across a good bit of Northampton in a dense, choking cloud by the huge explosion. A bullet was pulled out of the alarm box, but it was too mangled to be of any use to forensic scientists (and just as well; the Walther P88 wouldn't enter production for another two years, and that might have led to awkward questions), and if there was a cartridge case it had been crushed flat by the rubble. The site was cleared, but production did not resume and the plot was eventually acquired at a knock-down price by the Alexon Group -owners of Dolcis and one or two other big high-street clothing retailers- to replace the hopelessly overcrowded warehouse facilities in nearby Sywell and combine their storage and distribution facilities in a single site, as well as their main headquarters. The overall effect on the local economy was fairly positive; unpleasant working conditions and the strong aroma of curry that had pervaded everywhere within a three mile radius had not endeared British Pepper to local residents or its employees, but Alexon paid a good bit better and didn't perpetrate vile smells.

Rick watched the mop-up operation with interest, noting with satisfaction that Pettigrew was dragged away with the few Death Eaters who hadn't either died or fled. The enthusiastic crowd of teenagers returned to their own time, leaving Snape and Flitwick behind. Wordlessly, the three of them descended on a nearby pub.

"Nice bit of improvisation, I must say," Rick allowed. "But what I can't understand is how us going forward in time gets me in with the Glden Trio."

Flitwick shrugged. "Who knows? A butterfly can flap its wings and-"

"Rot!" Snape cut in. "You dropped us both right into Fudge's office and blew the gaffe on Alexander's home tutoring programme while I was in the middle of explaining just what the hell was going on!"

Rick burst out laughing for the first time since he'dfound his sister's mangled corpse on Platform 9 3/4. "Nice try, Professor Flitwick. No big deal; I always did want to go to Hogwarts, even if A-Levels got me a lot further than NEWTS."

They set up the return portal. "I should warn you that the Department of Mysteries has no empirical data upon the effects of returning to an altered time stream," Flitwick cautioned. "You might find it... odd."

"Can't be any worse, though, now can it?"

Rick took a long time to work out where he was. He seemed to be in a hospital bed, probably St Mungo's. What had happened? A broom accident? No, they'd been investigating the Malfoy family's Gothic pile for a connection between Lucius and the self-styled Heir of Voldemort when he'd taken a Crucio and... _No, that can't be bloody well right!_ Rick's thoughts knotted themselves horribly. He seemed to have memories of more than one past life. Over the course of an hour, he pieced it together in his mind. In Version 1, he had grown up to join the Aurors full-time and been at King's Cross for the bomb blast. Then he, Snape and Flitwick had journeyed back through the mists of time to blow up Voldemort's diabolical insurance policy and do him right over before he could cause too much more death and destruction, andhen wound up here. In Version 2 he had been packed off to Hogwarts by Fudge, got to know the Golden Trio and gone on a camping trip to Romania with several of them, only to bump into Snape and Flitwick and go with them to... _Oh, yeah, I watched that in Version 1._ Then he'd moved into what you might call Version 2a; no Voldemort, Harry's parents and Sirius Black still alive, but an even worse explosion at King's Cross... _But they pulled Lucy out of there with scarcely a scratch_, he remind himself.

Harry stuck his head around the door. "Morning, Rick. Feel any better?" Rick was mildly startled to notice A: the complete lack of a scar and B: the rather strong Northamptonshire accent Author's Note: I'm told it's a cross between Fenlands and Brummie Harry had acquired.

"It hurt like this when I last fell of my Silver Comet at speed, and when I did THAT I broke my collarbone in three places. What did I miss?"

"Quite a bit, mate. Poor old Draco took four Crucios. It got pretty hairy before we got some slightly unexpected backup. Picture, if you can, Professor Flitwick flying a broom with Professor Snape riding pillion and wielding an RPG-7 rocket launcher!" They both laughed. "This Heir of Voldemort character's probably gone to ground for the time being, but if nothing else came out of the mision, Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange are very dead."

"Good enough for me. Everybody okay?"

"Draco's still out, but the medics say he'll be alright in a couple of days. Everybody else is just a little bruised. The biggest worry is livig down being rescued in the very nick of time by our least favourite teacher in the entire school!"

_Harry, old pal, you don't know the half of it!_ Rick lay back, suddenly feeling terribly weary. _Might be a good idea not to mention this to anybody. They'd think tht Crucio had fried a few brain cells..._ He was asleep before he could finish the thought. After all, it had been one hell of a long day.


	2. The Morning After

Author's note: This basically picks up where I left 'On The Headmaster's Secret Service'; I got stuck for a while, life got in the way and I never finished Chapter 5. It really does help to read that one first.

By the way, the Golden Trio and their friends are somewhere in their mid-twenties in this.

Rick groaned, and looked at his watch. _Eight? Christ, I'm on duty in..._ He laughed at himself, and lay back down. _I'm not a full-time Auror any more_, he reminded himself, _I'm a Beater for a national Quidditch team._ Luna snuggled up against him, murmuring softly. He grinned. Fiddling with the course of history was a risky venture, but damned if they hadn't brought it off pretty well. Harry's parents. Neville's parents. Sirius. Dumbledore. All those hundreds of people he'd never know, but would have another shot at life without the spectre of Dark Magic in the background... That thought terminated abruptly.

_Let's not get cocky, Rick. There's still work to be done._ He slid out of bed, dragging on a somewhat threadbare bathrobe, and went in search of coffee.

At the top of the stairs, he heard somebody moving in the kitchen. Quickly but silently, he snatched his pistol from the top shelf of the airing cupboard. He carefully made his way downstairs, the slightly battered Desert Eagle in both hands. The chances of Death Eaters trying to break in twice in the space of a week seemed fairly small, but he was in no mood to take chances. He cautiously opened the kitchen door, and sighed. "Fred, George, just what the _hell_ are you doing in my kitchen? No, don't answer that, just undo whatever it is you've done already and beat it before I call the police!" There was little heat in his voice, but he hadn't put the gun away.

"You have no appreciation of the finer points of comedy," one of them -Rick neither knew nor cared which one was which- complained good-naturedly.

"That's not entirely true. I do however have a vivid recollection of you nailing all my bedroom furniture to the ceiling, which wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't fallen down. You destroyed my television, traumatised my cat, alienated my neighbours _and_ got Dad in trouble with the Ministry for use of magic by minors on his property all in the space of a single day!"

"We weren't-"

"They thought it was me. Now get out of my house!" He brandished the Desert Eagle. Affronted, they apparated away.

Very cautiously, Rick switched on the kettle. Satisfied that nothing awful would happen, he extracted Nescafe and sugar from the cupboard and dumped both into a mug, added milk and stirred for a few seconds while the kettle boiled.

"You're up early," Luna remarked. "And what's with the hardware?"

"I heard something downstairs; turned out to be those redheaded menaces going by the names of Fred and George, but for all I knew it was another bunch of fanatical Wasps supporters." Wimbourne LQC (League Quidditch Club) had recently lost badly to the up-and-coming Northampton Mavericks, a newly formed team inaugurated in the wake of Minister Weasley's opening up of the Quidditch leagues, but Rick was referring to the two Death Eaters who'd broken into the house and threatened Luna's life until he'd intervened.

She giggled, and pulled down a mug of her own. "They do have their moments."

"That they do," Rick replied, sipping his coffee, "and I stopped finding them funny a long time ago. I still think that straitjacket has the potential to be interesting, though..." he grinned, and slipped an arm around her and squeezed her somewhere intimate. This time, she merely giggled again.

Two hours later, the phone rang. Rick groaned, stuck his head out from beneath the duvet and picked it up. "Whoever you are, unless this is unbelievably important then please go away and leave me alone- oh, sorry Major Black."

"If it wasn't important I'd still be in bed as well, lad. Somebody's shot up the Ministry; one of the Sunday staff got hurt, but the biggest casualties were people's potted plants."

"I see. This Heir of Voldemort's mob again?"

Sirius shrugged. "Good question. Just about all the Death Eater mobs are picking up guns these days, but drive-bys seem to be his style. Anyhow, we've got most of our people going over London with a fine-tooth comb looking for the car; we've got a description off a uniformed patrol in the area, but the plates turned out to be fake. I've had to pull people off the Minister's detail, so I need some backup from you lot."

"Oh, joy. Okay, I'll be at the Burrow in half an hour."

The Order of the Basilisk convened at the Burrow, clutching an assortment of weapons and complaining good-naturedly about the hour of the morning at which they'd been aroused. A smoulderingly furious Hermione Granger was sitting in what had once been Ron's bedroom window with a shotgun, and Rick felt genuinely sorry for any Death Eater foolish enough to tangle with her. He carefully attached his wand to the old Uzi submachine-gun he'd carried in battle so many years before. _I wonder if the neighbours knew the history when they bought the place?_ Their grandson had been a surprise wizard, and his mother's childhood friend turning out to be both a witch and Harry Potter's younger sister had rather caught them off balance. Rick had met them briefly once at some Christmas do, and thought the boy's father had the rare distinction of being as amiably weird as Luna. Not to mention having worse hair than Harry...

He shook his head, and tried to concentrate on the issue at hand. The location was pretty good, with open ground on all sides for at least thirty yards and only one covered approach. There were no privacy wards up besides the standard NPM-screens (non-practitioner of magic, the polite alternative to Muggle, which the more forward-looking members of the magical community had adopted in recent years) stuff and a few basic anti-intruder charms aimed primarily at burglars. They'd set off a bell if anybody climbed over the garden fence, but that was about it. The large, Auror-issue Sneakoscope they'd brought with them was scrambled to the point of uselessness, and it turned out that the neighbours were playing poker.

"There's probably a by-law against doing that on the Sabbath," Harry quipped. "Where the hell is Ron with those pizzas?" Even Molly had her limits as far as catering went, and seeing as every Weasley grandchild -not to mention the Potter, Malfoy and Malone children- was being gathered under the one roof for reasons of safety (at Molly's insistence and without troubling to consult anybody else), they had decided not to impose on her more than necessary.

"When was the last time it was this noisy?" Ginny yelled over the minor riot that seemed to be breaking out in the garden as various Weasley children chased a football.

"Probably Tiffany's christening!" Draco replied. Rick still found the sight of his cousin -who he recalled as an arrogant, condescending little shit- bantering happily back and forth with the Golden Trio and bouncing a redheaded three year-old girl on his knee a touch surreal. And yet Draco had proved he never had it in him to be a bastard in two separate timelines; in the one Rick was in now he'd saved all three Dursleys from certain doom and caused his father to be severely concussed with a mobility aid. _And by God, I'd have given just about anything to have Uncle Lucius in the room when Draco saluted Sirius Black the other day!_

"Still makes you do a double take, doesn't it?" Ginny remarked. "Don't look so ashamed; it happens to me sometimes, and I married the bloke!"

"Damn! I thought my Mr Nice Guy act had you all fooled!" Draco laughed, exaggerating the famous Malfoy sneer to the point of caricature. "I must report to my Master at once!"

"Don't bother, Draco; I can still see you hyperventilating on my doorstep after the attack on Privet Drive!" Fran laughed. "The last time you were that scared was when Cedric hid in your wardrobe in seventh year."

Draco winced. Just about everybody's ears pricked up. After the unfortunate incident in their sixth year and her seventh when Cho had walked in on Cedric Diggory's departed shade locked in a passionate embrace with Moaning Myrtle in the ladies loo she haunted, they had assumed he had kept a low profile.

"You were there?" Draco spluttered.

"Cedric terrorised Mr Peroxide here, in front of your very eyes, and _you never told any of us?"_ Harry exploded.

"Couldn't prove it, and if I'd told you I'd pinched your Invisibility Cloak and hidden under it with Pansy Parkinson you would have gone mad. Okay, listen up, all of you." They gathered round. "It was actually Pansy who put him up to it; this was just after the breakup, you see. She wanted an independent witness she could trust, so she went to me. I appropriated the cloak, put some film in my camera and rendezvoused with her at a safe distance from the tower. She let us both in, and I made my way to the men's dormitories. Pansy was behind me with her own camera, and I got the impression she'd had to sneak in here a few times before."

"You're right there," Draco remarked. "Oh, the stories I could- Ow! Knock it off, Gin!"

_"Anyway,"_ Fran continued pointedly, "at about midnight Draco goes up to bed, takes off his robes and goes to hang them in the wardrobe. What are you turning red for, you fool? You called me a dyke so many times when we were sprogs that I believed you!" Draco went even redder. "And just as he's opening the door, Cedric sticks his head through it and asks for directions to the Astronomy Tower 'cause he's meeting somebody. And poor old Draco faints dead away."

"Would that be Myrtle or Fleur?" Cho called out from the other side of the room. The only blonde Weasleys in the family made valiant attempts to shout her down until tackled to the floor by their cousins.

"I didn't ask," Fran replied. "And then he sort of floats down the stairs, moons the common room and wanders off. I was laughing so hard I could barely press the button, and would you believe it? The sodding shutter stuck! Luckily Pansy had a backup camera, but I never found out what happened to the photos."

"They never came out," Draco ground out from between his teeth, "on account of me wrestling the camera away from her and drop-kicking it across the common room when I came round to find her bragging about it to just about _everybody._" He had now gone such a deep shade of crimson he looked like a negative photograph of a Weasley. By way of consolation, Cho told him the silly petname she'd given him so that if they ever saw each other again he could get some measure of revenge. Luna slightly spoilt the effect by remarking in her usual apparently offhand way (in what Rick knew full well was in the spirit of causing deliberate mayhem) that Harry had picked up on the petname he'd given Cho in return, causing her to shout a stream of Chinese at Luna that would have made Malcolm Reynolds blush and sparking a lengthy side debate between Rick and Hermione over whether the David Bowie single in question (do I really need to tell you which one it is?) was any good.

Any Death Eater trying to approach the house would probably have fled in terror by now, Harry suspected, right up until a dozen bullets and a Stunner hit him in the chest.


	3. Let Slip The Dogs Of War!

Author's Note: A combination of the lateness of the hour, thunderously loud rock music and heavily Bells-enhanced coffee means that this concluding chapter will involve quite a lot of death and destruction, as well as references to BDSM in the context of Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. The phrase Cho says in her family's native language was borrowed from one of Vampbarbie's 'Firefly' stories. You wouldn't believe me if I gave you a literal translation.

_"Everybody down!" _Rick yelled, grabbing his Uzi and firing through the nearest window. "Molly, Arthur, get the kids into the cellar! Everybody else, suppressing fire!"

"Just like the last time, isn't it?" Draco remarked, firing wildly out of the window with a pair of Tec-9 machine pistols (Author's Note: I know Rick thought they were something else in Chapter 1, but he didn't have his Jane's Recognition Guide on him). "All we need are Snape with a sniper rifle and Harry's parents chucking Molotovs and it'd be practically the same tactical situation!"

A three-round burst destroyed Arthur's brand new widescreen television. "Not quite!" Ginny laughed, spraying a rustling bush with gunfire.

"They got that trick from _us!_" Rick grumbled. "Is Harry okay?"

"Homicidally furious but still breathing!" he replied, shaking flattened bullets out from between his body armour and his shirt and opening fire. He'd taped his wand to the fore-end of his CZ23, a Czechoslovakian attempt at something to match the Uzi that had never really caught on. He hurled magical lightning from it every few seconds as an alternative to bullets. _Must remember that trick_, Rick concluded, dropping the now-empty Uzi and drawing the Desert Eagle. Wand in his left hand, pistol in his right, he cut loose with hexes and hollowpoints at the crowd of Death Eaters. Several went down, but there were just too many...

"This is Malfoy!" Draco yelled into the fireplace. "We have a _massive_ Death Eater attack underway. There have to be close to a hundred of them out there! We need backup!"

"I'm out!" Hermione yelled, throwing aside her shotgun and drawing her sidearm. "We can't hold them for much longer!"

"Hear that? We'll be down to our wands pretty soon, and wands against machine guns don't work!" Draco shouted above the roar of gunfire.

_"Grenade!" _somebody yelled. They dived behind whatever furniture came to hand, wincing as the shrapnel destroyed fixtures and fittings. "That was my living room, you bastards!" Molly yelled, once she was certain that nobody had been injured badly.

A depressingly familiar voice bellowed at them through a perfectly ordinary loudhailer. "Throw out the guns and leave the building with your hands in the air and we'll only beat you up a little bit!"

"Sod off and die, ratface!" Harry suggested cheerfully. "You couldn't even be a successful spy; what makes you a worthy Dark Lord?"

"Oh, you haven't a clue, lad!" Pettigrew laughed. "Your father was supposed to win, and I was going to get Riddle's job!"

The Order of the Basilisk exchanged looks. "Talk about ten steps forward and nine steps back," Luna remarked bitterly.

"You were even more helpful than I realised until recently!" Pettigrew continued. "I didn't know about the Horcruxes then, and if you hadn't blown them up then he'd still be with us!"

"Did we do that?" hissed Cho.

"I did," Rick replied. "Snape and Flitwick took me back with them from the original timeline to plant explosives. Draco, do you remember the front company belonging to your father that got blown up?"

"Yeah, curry powder warehouse or something; warehouse manager was one of Voldemort's inner circle, working under cover." (Author's Note: This might explain his adherence to the 'abuse subordinates in front of entire warehouse when they make mistakes' school of leadership. No, I'm not bitter at all!) Light dawned. "The Horcruxes were in there?"

"Got it in one. I broke in the night before, planted the charges and rendezvoused with Snape outside Godric's Hollow. Just as well none of you noticed, but I was hiding behind that blue Allegro with the detonator. Yes, I know it sounds daft, but I swear it's true."

"That should have made the universe disappear up its own back passage, surely," Fran retorted.

"Maybe. All I know is that in the timeline I came from, you, Hermione and Lucy were murdered by Death Eaters. We'd lost too damned many people by then. Sirius, Dumbledore, Narcissa; she died because Draco was supposed to get himself killed just to piss off Lucius, but Snape did it for him to maintain his cover and save Blondie's arse. It was nothing but a decade-long nightmare, and I'm sorry I can still remember it."

At this point, things outside began to get interesting. Some fifty Special Tactical Response Aurors apparated with a cacophony that was exceeded only by the roar of gunfire as they laid into the Death Eaters. Pettigrew swore inventively and let fly Killing Curses and 9mm rounds with equal enthusiasm. The Order rallied. With the last of their ammunition, they laid down a fusillade of suppressing fire. Something huge and wolflike dived through a window, carrying a large sack in its jaws. "Nice one, Siri... What the-?" Remus Lupin returned to his human form. "That's not normal, is it? I thought that only happened once a month? And that Snape cured you?" Rick said slowly, thinking back to a certain Yule ball the year before they went back in time with Snape; Remus Lupin appearing beneath the full moon with his wife, apparently cured by none other than Severus Snape himself, though that hadn't been half as shocking as Snape eventually getting off with a graduating student... (See Kittenmommy's 'The Lady And The Snape', a sequel to her story in my Favourites. Apart from explaining that last sentence, it's a cracker of a story!)

"I know; we only found out a bit later. I'm still technically a werewolf, but I can change whenever I feel the urge and keep all my faculties. Better than a complete cure if you ask me! Now can somebody dig my clothes out of that bag? There's more ammunition in there for you as well."

They reloaded their depleted weapons and made ready to charge. But there was nobody left to charge _at._

"They bugged out," Remus grumbled. "Typical. Get a trace running on those apparations!" he ordered somebody outside.

Molly had emerged from the cellar, face matching her hair. "Any of those bastards left alive?" she demanded.

"They all legged it. We're going after them as soon as they're traced. There is going to be _hell_ to pay!" Ron said vehemently. "One of those buggers took a Kalashnikov to my Cannons posters!" They refrained from remarking upon Chudley LQC's playing skills because Ron was A: the team's head coach and B: holding a loaded and cocked AK-74.

"Got a fix!" one of the Aurors yelled. "And surprise surprise, it's Malfoy Manor!"

"Figures," Draco said coldly. "Let's move out, people!"

"Why's he giving all the sodding orders?" muttered Lavender.

"Because he's a Lieutenant and he was commissioned six months ahead of all of us," Harry replied. "Now let's go!"

At chez Malfoy, Peter was helping himself to some of Lucius's best brandy and trying to look on the bright side. There was no Lucius. There was no Bellatrix. There was no Lucius _and_ Bellatrix to make Narcissa fume like only a Veela can, though Merlin knew she ought to have been relieved that he'd found someone to deal with some of his more unconventional preferences.

Unfortunately, Narcissa herself hadn't been at all glad to see them, to the point of obliging Gregory Goyle so whack her upside the head and leave her firmly restrained in the cellar where Lucius and Bellatrix spent their free time. Pettigrew tried hard to stop thinking about that; Bella in PVC was a sight he felt he could have done without. He swirled the brandy in the expensive balloon glass, savouring the aroma.

Three floors below him, the Order of the Basilisk were making their way through a small tunnel leading from the nearby main road. Just next to a bus stop, in fact. "Great-Grandfather had it put in for the staff, but I used to use it as well," Draco explained. "Took me ages to master the Disillusionment Charm, and broomstick travel and pissing rain don't mix, so I used the bus when I wanted to go to McDonald's or whatever."

"Naughty little pureblood," Rick said with a grin. "Any security down here?"

"Just the lock, but it's spellproof."

"Greville and Nuggan?"

"Offhand, I can't remember. I do however remember the old combination," Draco pointed out helpfully. "And if Father bothered to change it the door isn't all that thick anyhow."

He unlocked the inner door without difficulty, and Cho took point and swept the room. "S_hen sheng de gao wan!_ Did it look like this in here when you used to use this passageway, Draco? Oh, _go se..._ All of you stay out there for a few minutes, okay? And shut the door; nobody else needs to see this!"

"Mmmmph!" Narcissa agreed, straining against the ball gag and wrist and ankle restraints that bound her to some sort of examination table. Nobody, Cho felt, should be made to see their mother under such circumstances. Especially not with their spouse, cousins and best friends present. She managed to release Draco's unharmed but furious mother after considerable effort and several further Chinese oaths, and let the others in.

"Sorry guys; it would have been embarrassing otherwise."

"What would- Oh, 'kinnel!" Harry exclaimed. "I mean, I sort of figured that Malfoy Manor would have a dungeon of some sort, but I'd seen it as being a bit more... traditional? Functional? And without mirrors, dildos and strange leather objects?"

Draco buried his face in his hands. "No. Please, God, _no. _This isn't fair. Dad, you _bastard_. I really, _really_ did not want anybody to see this aspect of- Oh, Merlin! Mum! Are you okay?"

"I'm fine; they just put me in that thing to keep me out of the way. So, this is the famous Order of the Basilisk, then?"

"Yes. I hope you'll forgive me if we leave proper introductions for the time being? We're a bit pressed for time." Safety catches were released and rounds chambered. (Believe it or not, leaving the cocking of weapons to the last minute isn't just done for effect in films; cocked guns have a habit of going off in transit if mishandled.) "Okay, people, let's go hand Ratface and friends their arses!"

"Anybody got a spare gun?" Narcissa chipped in. "I'd like very serious words with Peter!" Draco graciously handed over one of his, along with half his ammunition and a brief explanation of the cocking handle and magazine release. "Right, then. Can anybody think of a good battle cry?"

"How does 'Yeeeaaaarrrrgh!' grab you?" Fran suggested.

"Works for me."

Yelling this rather unimaginative battle cry and waving their assorted weapons, they charged out of the dungeon like the hounds of hell. At roughly the same moment, the two hundred Aurors surrounding the building decided to make their move. They had lost communication with the Order due to the powerful background magic level interfering with their radios, and had to hope for the best. They also didn't know that there was a much larger number of extremely well-armed and deeply pissed-off Death Eaters in the building than had been at the Burrow. This was, inevitably, going to be messy.

Peter heard the cacophony of hexes, Unforgivables and various calibres of gunfire and sighed. Pausing only to toss back the brandy he picked up his wand and Glock and headed downstairs to find out just what the hell was going on _this_ time.

"Hey, Scabbers! Remember me?" Ron yelled, rounding a corner and letting fly. Peter dived for cover and hurled his best hex along with a fast double-tap. The brandy had not done his aim any favours, and the hex merely set fire to some curtains behind the oncoming Order members. The bullets shattered the associated window. A more or less solid wall of lead was rushing past the pillar he was hiding behind, and Peter began to wonder if being Ron Weasley's pet rat had been such a bad career after all. It would have involved a sight less pain and suffering, apart from that bloody great cat. He had raped Mrs Norris though...

The Aurors had succeeded in breaking down the main door, but the Death Eaters were fighting a determined rearguard action up the main staircase. Several had barricaded themselves into the banqueting hall but were being evicted with the assistance of tear gas. Additional Aurors were leaping through skylights from brooms, clearing the way with stun grenades. Several of these had caused fires to break out in the carpets, and since Lucius had steadfastly resisted the provision of fire extinguishers the whole place was in danger of going up. The house elves were as fiercely loyal to the Malfoy family as only house elves can be, but had mutually concluded that doing anything about running gun battles in a burning building lay outside the scope of their duties (not that they really had a procedure for this kind of thing) and made good their retreat to watch the show.

Peter wasn't aware of the details; he just knew that a dozen-odd very angry friends and associates of the Golden Trio were shooting at him. "Oh, sod this," he said to himself, and disapparated.

On the ground floor, Remus and Sirius were leading a squad of Aurors in a charge up the main stairs. "Baxter, Edwards, go with Captain Lupin and clear out those servant quarters," Sirius ordered. "Everybody else, follow me!" Before anybody could comply, a huge greyish werewolf appeared before them. It was not in the very best of moods.

"Greyback," Remus snarled. "Out of the way, you lot. The two of us have some unfinished business!" He leapt, transforming as he did so. Sirius groaned, watching in fascinated horror as they fell on each other. Remus had Greyback in a throat lock, and the other werewolf was returning to human form to get some purchase. Remus took a cue from his opponent, returned to his normal shape and kneed the other man sharply in the groin, then jumped up out of the way. Sirius took advantage of the moment to shoot Greyback in the chest with the bullet he'd slipped into the chamber of his sidearm, a hollowpoint full of silver nitrate; rumour had it that R&D came up with the idea after watching _Underworld_ on DVD. Greyback expired messily.

"Thanks. Okay, where were we?"

On the ground floor, the Order were advancing against stiff resistance. "How are we doing for ammunition?" Rick called, firing a blinding hex down the corridor and following it up with a three-round burst from the Uzi.

"About half our clips!" Harry yelled back, doing the thing with the lightning again. There was a tremendous crash behind them as part of the first floor collapsed. he corridors were filling rapidly with smoke, and the heat was becoming dangerously intense. "I think it's about time we got the hell out of here!"

"Yeah, and then right after that we're calling the fire brigade!" Draco added. "This is my sodding inheritance burning to the ground!"

"You know, living with us and the Weasleys hasn't changed you all the way into a human being!" Fran remarked caustically.

"Spend a few years living under the same roof as Lucius 'It Is My Divine Right To Be An Arrogant Bastard' Malfoy and see how much sentimental value the place has!" Narcissa suggested.

"Fair one. Sorry, Draco!"

The Death Eaters were already getting out as fast as they could, so the Order (plus guest) decided to concentrate on running. "And in case anybody's wondering," Draco said in a caricature of the arrogant tone he'd shed around sixth year that suffered for shortage of breath, "I never considered my right to be an arrogant bastard divine, merely inherited."

"And in all fairness, his father could probably have produced the paperwork!" Narcissa added. Rick wondered if the others were as startled as himself to find that the woman who married Lucius Malfoy was actually an immensely likeable woman with a wicked sense of humour. _How the hell did she fetch up hitched to the bastard? Some kind of arranged marriage thing, I suppose._

By the time they made it out of the building and came across two smoke-blackened but madly grinning ex-Marauders, the fire engines were already pulling up. "How bad was it?" Rick asked them.

"For the Death Eaters? Very!" Sirius replied. "We killed or captured nearly a hundred and fifty by out best guess. Haven't heard the final casualty figures yet but nobody on my team had a scratch. We've set the Heir of Voldemort back by about fifty years!"

"Shame Pettigrew got away, though. I had a nice bright future planned for him in a behavioural research lab Amanda's cousin works in," Remus added.

"The hell with him; it'll be a long time before he can show his face in the UK again," Draco snorted. "Everything alright at the Burrow?"

"Molly's having one of her little moments, but otherwise it's business as usual. Now, do you think we could have a little explanation for this Horcrux business...?"

Over the course of two hours, they got their explanation. Rick briefed them with every detail he could recall of the original timeline. "So the next thing I know, I come around in St Mungo's aching everywhere and two and a half different past lives," he concluded. "Personally, I'd rather ditch the old ones. It worked out the way Snape and Flitwick planned it. How are the Ministry likely to react?"

"They'll screw the lid down on it for he next thousand years," Sirius replied. "I'll see to that. Can we expect cooperation from the media?"

"I can promise it," Luna replied. "And I'll get Dad to have a little chat to Rita."

"Good. Now let's finish mopping up and find the nearest really good pub!"

Malfoy Manor was totally destroyed, to nobody's real sorrow. The land was sold for redevelopment, and eventually passed into the hands of Weasley Brothers, toy, game and practical joke makers. Narcissa and Draco split the proceeds and the insurance, and a surprisingly large donation reached the National House Elf Benevolent Fund that Hermione, Dobby and Winky set up to help enforce regulated working conditions for house-elves.

The Order of the Basilisk now numbers three commissioned Aurors, four league Quidditch players, two Hogwarts teacher and one incredibly rich magazine owner. They average five children each; prolonged exposure to the Weasleys has clearly rubbed off.

The Ministry of Magic did indeed clamp down heavily on any publicity of the odder aspects of the affair. Severus Snape was awarded a bar to the Order of Merlin he won for his lycanthropy cure. He continues to teach Potions at Hogwarts in his own inimitable way, while his wife Cynthia heads a potions research team for the Department of Mysteries. They are godparents to Remus and Amanda Lupin's daughter Juliet, who is the first natural-born werewolf to attend Hogwarts (The genetic effects upon Remus are such that to conceive successfully he was obliged to bite his own wife, after she threatened him with bodily injury if he didn't!), and while she will not be able to take Snape's cure until her adolescence she has responded well to conventional Wolfsbane treatment.

Professor Flitwick also received an Order of Merlin, First Class, and has since retired to the South of France.

Peter Pettigrew, predictably, did not go quietly into the night. He was successful in escaping to the United States, where he gained employment as a sales agent for a major Colombian narcotics cartel. After a pitched gun battle in which he is known to have killed two NYPD officers, he fled to Colombia before being intercepted by the Royal Marine boarding party aboard the destroyer HMS _Dauntless_ off the Cayman Islands. The Brazilian-registered freighter he was travelling aboard was bound for the Mediterranean with nearly fifty metric tonnes of cocaine onboard. He is now serving three concurrent life sentences for multiple homicides and drug offences.

Luna never did find a Crumple-Horned Snorcack.


End file.
